Ao Nang - Days 156-159
Hello fellow readers of Ben and Meg’s Travel Bugs Blog. Andrew Wiech here, one of our newlywed’s friends from Milwaukee. Before I make you read my ramblings of what we did in Ao Nang & Krabi, I should probably share some credentials. I’m a Milwaukee Bar League volleyball teammate for team Crazy Aunt Mikki and really started hanging out with Ben and Meg probably because they needed a sub. Our mutual friend Dan typically subbed in from time to time but he had tore his Achilles and was out of the season so I got the text to come and play. Shortly after Dan’s injury, Taylor busted up his ACL in a REC soccer game and they needed a full-time third guy. Given my speedy replies to texts and my typical willingness to say yes, I joined. Obviously, I don’t wish injuries on my buddies but in this particular scenario, it kind of worked out in my favor.
From there, I played with Ben and Meg for two years at various volleyball leagues in the greater Milwaukee area. Bar leagues lead to beers and beers lead to conversations. In one of the many chats, I learned of their lives, interests and opinions and their wish of traveling abroad after their wedding. Being a “basic” millennial with a bit of wanderlust and an above average collection of passport stamps, I insisted on tagging along for their Thailand tour and invited myself on their honeymoon (after 5 months, does it still count as a honeymoon?). Slowly but surely, word spread and interests were piqued. With a little help from our friend Scott, I might have been the first to book my flight in February 2017 after a particularly, annoyingly cold week in Milwaukee and like dominos, the rest of the crew fell into place and we ended up with 15 people that had plane tickets to Thailand in October/November.
Leading up to this trip, possibly the coolest part of this story is just the fact of how large our numbers grew. 15 friends flying to Thailand for ~3 weeks doesn’t just happen and I truly think this is a testament to values Ben and Meg hold and the lives they created for themselves together. All in all, I’ve felt blessed to have them in my life, all made possible by a volleyball and a welcoming attitude.
Ok, enough with the sap. You came here to read about our adventures, right?
Day 0:
The plan was the meet up with Ben, Meg, their long-time third wheel Taylor and Aaron in Ao Nang, just outside of Krabi town in the southwest part of the country. Tyler and Kelsey were going to meet us there as well but to get there, I flew out of Chicago O’Hare on Japan Airlines on a Thursday, arriving in Bangkok bright and early Saturday morning. With two nights sleep on a plane (S/O to dreamwater), a layover in Tokyo along with a mildly overwhelming airport transfer from Narita to Haneda through Tokyo Station, I’m warmly welcomed at the hostel in Bangkok at 7am by Mikki and Sam Harms with some hugs and an offer to user there shower. “twas much needed.
After getting cleaned up, we head out towards the streets on a quest for tasty food, finding what we believe to be a pretty authentic local market. When none of the menus have any English translations, you know you’ve found a good one. I ate something unidentifiable that had squid, shrimp and pork. After fueling up with some food and some iced espressos, we continue walking around till we’re stop by some random local “history teacher” that tries to help us plan out our day. I put his profession in quotes because we’re about 80% sure this was a scam for us to hop in a tuktuk and be driven around a couple temples but ultimately end up in a B.S. suit shop in a timeshare-like sales experience. All in all, they carted us to a couple temples for a few hours and we only paid 30 Baht which is less than a dollar. We may have been scammed but it didn’t hurt the pocket book all that much.
Once we escaped our tuktuk captors for our hostel, we set out on our own temple crawl visiting Wat Saket, the giant swing, and Reclining Buddha. Between temples, we made sure to visit a restaurant recommended to us by our hostel owner and started to check off items from Sam’s “Things I need to eat is Thailand” list. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to check out the Grand Palace because it was closed. The long-time king of Thailand had passed away within the last year and the country was mourning that loss with a cremation ceremony which tends to not be an tourist activity. Once we had our fill of temples, we grabbed some drinks at a nearby rooftop bar attached to a hostel and watched the sun set over Wat Arun and the Chan Phraya River. Having starred at the river for an hour or two chatting, we determined it would be fun to get on a river boat and float on down to the Asiatique market. The market was decent but couldn’t shake the feeling that we went to the Thai equivalent of Navy Pier. After some beers and wandering, we hail an uber and head back to the hostel. We’ve got an early flight tomorrow and I was also very much looking forward to sleeping in a bed.
Day 1:
Here it was! The day we’ve been looking forward to for a while. Time to roll out of Bangkok to meet up with our friends. After an easy 1.5 hour flight from DMK to Krabi, we taxi to our hostel in Ao Nang to drop off our bags and head down to see the Andaman Sea in person followed by some lunch. Sam was able to check off Massuman Curry from his list, while Mikki went with chicken fried rice with pineapple and I have my first Pad Thai of the vacations. After toasting with some big Chang beers, we enjoyed our food and headed back to the hostel to find our friends had just arrived. We all hug it out and settle into our hostel.
Day 1 was pretty low key. All in all, we just wanted to hear all about Ben and Meg’s time in Nepal and Sri Lanka over some beers. Once we were hungry, we headed inland toward what we had read to be a local market. We found what looked to be a market place minus the vendors and trekked back to the closest acceptable establishment, eating at a market that specialized in some thai halal seafood dishes. Ao Nang, being in a more rural area, seemed to be predominately muslim and therefore, there was no pork in the dinner forecast. We ate and headed back to the hostel to keep chatting over some Changs and headed to bed.
Day 2:
More friends arrive today! Ilya, Lauren and my little sister Laur arrive into Ao Nang around 8am. As tired and hungry as those three might have been, we had a big day ahead of us with some island hopping. Sorry, buddy. No time for sleep. Just put on your swimsuit, here’s a coffee and a muffin and get on the boat. It usually helps to power through that first day to try and get on a normal sleep schedule.
Once we’re all gathered by the beach after turning a few of Ben and Tyler’s Dry Sack bags into Wet Sack bags filling them with ice and Chang, we test our haggling skills to try and snag our group of 12 a private boat for the day. Unfortunately, this one company is running the show and they don’t sway at all on some of their rates. At one point, they even raised their price on us. It was odd. Eventually, we kind of caved but sent up Taylor with a little less money then the asking price to see if he could work his charm with the boat cartel. No Thai lady can resist his smirk. We get on our boat and off we go to Koh Poda.
Koh Poda is a short 20 minute boat ride from the shores of Ao Nang. We arrive at a picturesque soft, sandy beach surrounded by crystal clear water. We throw down towels in the shade and scatter to various activities. Frisbees were thrown with diving catches into the waves, a few went off to snorkel and others took a lap around the trails to take it all in. We stay a few hours and before we agree that you need to go to more than one island to consider it island hopping. From there, we’re off to Chicken Island.
Chicken Island is appropriately named because on of the limestone formations looks pretty much like a chicken. Makes sense, eh? It’s a short ~20 minutes boat ride away. One of the coolest parts of Chicken Island is this sandbar that connects two parts of the island which is easily walkable during low points of the tide. We dock and settle into the shade, cooling off we a coupe more Changs in the shallow parts of the sea. After a few hours, we see the skies start to turn and feel the wind pick up. There’s a storm brewing so we take the hints and roll out. The ride back to Ao Nang was a bit rough. With the higher winds and biggest swells, we experienced a lot of “4D splash theater” as my sister Laur white knuckled the boat. She’s got a bit of a fear of open water because we made her watch Jaws when she was probably too little. Sorry, Laur!
Anyways, we make it back to Ao Nang and clean ourselves up. We’ve got a big night tonight with a Thai Cooking Class from the Thai Charm Cooking School and the bus is arriving at 4:30pm. (Note: Ilya and Lauren haven’t really slept for the last 48 hours so cheers to them for rallying). While we were island hopping, two more of the crew, Katelyn and Jason Locklear, check into their hostel and are waiting for us. We board the bus and make are way inland to “school.”
At cooking school, we’re greeted by Heng and his family as we go through the syllabus. Everyone will be preparing their own meal and will get to select one dish from three options in five categories. On top of that, we all make two desserts after we eat our self-prepared meals. This is going to be a lot of food. We all make our selection from the categories of soup, stir fry, salad, curry paste and curry dish and head to our cooking stations. We basically had a private cooking class for our group of 14 minus two German hop-ons that didn’t initially realize that we were one giant group. Sorry about it, random Germans.
Our teacher Hang is full of energy and has pretty solid english. As we go through the lecture and learn his insights, he litters his material with a ton of goofy puns and the most unique laugh I’ve probably ever heard. It sounded just like a witch’s cackle but you knew Hang wasn’t wicked in the slightest. Everyone was able to show off their cooking skills and even got to play with a little fire as Hang taught us how to flame up our woks. Once we finished all of our dishes, we grabbed some more beers and sat down to dig in. Everything we prepared was excellent, plus we actually learned lot too about the various differences between each dish. Way to make learning fun, Hang. After we over indulged, we headed back to the wok to prepare some mango sticky rice and some bananas in coconut milk. Full would be an understatement as we anxiously waited to be shuttled back home to bed. Way to go, Ilya, Lauren and Laur for powering through your arrival day.
Day 3:
We wake up and say “see ya later” to Kelsey and Tyler. They’re gonna spend a couple days on Koh Phi Phi and we’ll meet them back up in Chiang Mai. As we all start to slowly wake up for the day, Aaron tells us he made a few to many visits to the porcelain throne last night and may have gotten sick from the food. Sorry, Aaron, but you did cook it yourself so that’s probably on you.
Today’s plan is Railey beach which is known as one of the top beaches in the world. As planned, we’re a short 10 minute long boat ride away. Aaron decides to stay back to recover and Ilya and Lauren are in need of a more relaxed by the pool at their hostel. The rest of us pack up supplies for the day and make our way back to the boat cartel. We arrive to yet another picturesque view, layout some towels and relax. While hanging out on the sand and in the water, we spot a couple dudes not far away hitting a volleyball back and forth. A clear no-brainer for this crew, Ben, Taylor and I approach to see if they’ll let us jump in. The two playing were from Australia and Switzerland and they were currently about 3 months into a bike tour of Southeast Asia. As we’re playing, we’re joined by a Canadian and hit around for some time.
After working up some sweat and cooling off in the water, we head back to the group and learn of a trail near the south side of the beach that’s supposed to lead to some pretty solid views of Railey. We decide to head that way and check it out. A few of us were just wearing slide sandals so the trek was a little more challenging then it needed to be but we make our way up. Near the top of the hike, we approach our biggest challenge: a ladder attached to the rock formation but it’s missing a step. Fearless or stupid, you decide, but we make our way past the obstacle and soak in the view. After some time up there, we decided to make our way back for either a late lunch or to take the next boat back to Ao Nang.
Back in Ao Nang, Ben and Meg show us how good they’ve become at traveling with the genius idea of renting motor bikes tonight to prepare for our kayak trip tomorrow. We work out a deal with a vendor name Eugene and get 9 bikes for a day and a half. I had never drove a motor bike before so I have Taylor give me a quick crash course and we’re off to a find some food. We attempted to find another local market only to end up at something that didn’t quite feel right so we head back to the same seafood market we went to on Day 1 because that was super tasty. Unfortunately, we’re kind of striking out on the markets that we’ve all read so much about but we’ll figure it out. We finish eating and head back to the hostel to rest up for our big day tomorrow.
Day 4:
Alright, Day 4! We wake up a get the bike gang assembled. We’ve got about a 45 minute ride north to Ao Thalen to kayak through some mangroves. Rolling 9 bikes and 12 people deep, we set out rolling through some beautiful vistas. I was a little nervous about the whole motor bike thing but in the end, that was probably one of my favorite things we did in Ao Nang. It was awesome to have the freedom on the road and wind through the various roads. That said, our bike gang still needs an official name and we’re taking suggestions in the comments below.
We make it to Ao Thalen, pair up and get assigned a kayak and a guide through mangroves. These mangroves are cool because the route is always changing based on the tide. When low tide hits, a lot of these paths no longer exist. As we’re paddling through, we sight our first wildlife: a couple monkeys hanging out in the streets. Now these monkeys have probably learned a thing or two about tourists and that thing is that they
probably carry food. While kayaking past them, one particularly mischievous monkey eyes up Laur and my kayak. As Laur’s about to snap a picture, the monkey jumps from the tree, onto our kayak. Laur screams as the monkey looks through your bag finding a some mixed nuts. The monkey bites open the bag hops into the tree, staring at us while he eats our snack. Pretty rude, eh? Following his lead, the second monkey is hoping we have more so he pays us a visit. Eventually, the guide comes back and advises us on how to shoo away the monkey. We get him off our boat only to have him jump on over a pay a visit to Meg and Taylor. Taylor practices his parenting skills and scolds the monkey for rummaging through his things but the monkey doesn’t listen well. We eventually rid our kayaks of hop-ons but we all learned some valuable monkey survival skills and had an awesome story to remember the kayak trip by. After a few stops near a local cove and the recently revealed sandbar because of low tide, we make our way back to the kayak shop to settle up and head back to town.
A 45 minutes of motor bikes later, we come across what looks like our biggest potential win in terms of food in Ao Nang. We see a line of carts set up in the grass so we park our bikes and look at some menus. Personally, this was my most favorite meal in Ao Nang. I grabbed a kiwi apple fruit shake, grabbed some spring rolls and fried squid for the table and ordered some spicy fried clams over rice. After seeing the spring rolls and wanting some more, Laur asks one of the cooks if she can get two more spring rolls. Fortunately, for the table, Laur didn’t realize that she ordered two orders and that each order came with four so a couple minutes later, a big plate is placed in front of here full of some fried rolls. Thankfully, many of us jumped in to help hide her gluttony.
Once we were full, we headed back to the hostel and said “see ya later” to Katelyn and Jason as they were flying to Chiang Mai a day earlier to do some hiking. While a few folks were soaking in the AC at the hostel, six of us head out on the quest for some Thai Massages. Mikki and Sam end up a place that just had two openings at that moment that was recommended to them by Ilya and Ben, Aaron, Laur and I settled on the next best open according to google reviews. So, I haven’t really had a lot of massages before so I can only assume the masseuse had a few laughs at my expense. All four of us were lined up, separated by some privacy curtains. In each “room” was a pair of thai pants that none of us could figure out how to tie. You could hear the chuckles from Lauren and myself as she hears me struggle with the pants and we overhear Aaron attempting to ask his masseuse how he’s suppose to use these. All in all, we had a good laugh and got to relax a bit.
Once we settled up, we had to quick get back to the hostel and change up for the Krabi town night market. Krabi town is about a 35 minute drive away and we still had the motor bikes till the end of the night so we might as well head into the town and grab some tasty treats. Getting to apply our daytime driving skills to a night time setting was a little stressful at times but we all arrived in one piece together. Krabi town was a bit larger than Ao Nang and it appears to have a line of festival tents set up with a ton of food venders. The group scatters as we all seek out the best bites, tasting everything from fried crickets and grubs to steam buns and pad thai. Beside the festival market, we were only about 2 blocks away from the traditional (non-festival related) Krabi Night market. Same situation, we walk in and scatter as everyone gets something to nibble on and is more than willing to share a bite hear and there. Best taste for me would have to be the steamed fish cakes.
After we’re uncomfortably full, we had back to the festival to check out the shops. Thailand has some pretty solid fake designer clothes. Ilya tells me this is because Thailand doesn’t have much in terms of copyright laws so you can basically put any logo on anything. Ilya, Ben and I settle on buying some fanny packs that just say “SPORTS” and head back to the bikes so return them to Eugene.
After dropping off our bikes, we decide that we should do it up our last night in Ao Nang. We grab some beers from the local 7-Eleven and enjoy the patio of our hostel. After playing some Mount Rushmore/snake draft of appetizers (S/O to Dan Kubasa and his talent of coming up with obscure drinking games), we decide to head out to a bar because we drank everything in our hostel. We stop by a place called Boogie Bar for one and then start to head up to the local McDs for some good ol’ drunk food. On the way, Laur spots a side street that’s full of bars and expresses some interest in stopping. Ben leads the group over for one more beer, only for it to end up being two towers of Chang and a couple shots. We play some drinking games like Cheers Governor and the finger game (it must have a name besides the finger game but I don’t know what it is) and catch the attention of some locals working for the bar. We must have looked like some crazy Americans based on our antics. Well, time flies when you’re having fun and just like that, it’s past 4am. I guess maybe bars don’t close in this part of Thailand as long as you’re still drinking… We settle up and finally get the previously promised McDs, head back to the hostel and pass out hard.
Day 5:
Given the activities of day 4, we got a bit of a slow start on Day 5 but we pretty much just wanted to relax until our 2:50pm flight. Everyone pretty much does their own thing for most of the morning with various breakfasts, last chance beach visits and haggling practice in the shops. When that’s all said and done, we pack up, check out and head to the airport. Peace out, Ao Nang. It’s been real fun.
Next stop, Chiang Mai.